


The Ghosts We Carry

by AceQueenKing



Category: Suikoden V
Genre: Based on Suikoden V Bad Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Set during Suikoden II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 01:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15570999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: There are dreams that Freyjadour is still haunted by, so intense he can still almost taste the snow of the Arshtwal Mountains.  He awakens, palms slick, in a small tent on the northern, war-torn continent that has, somehow, become home.Freyjadour Falenas, second to last of his name — never, in a million years, did the Prince of Falena ever think of calling such a place home.





	The Ghosts We Carry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pirotess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirotess/gifts).



There are dreams that Freyjadour is still haunted by, so intense he can still almost taste the snow of the Arshtwal Mountains. He awakens, palms slick, in a small tent on the northern, war-torn continent that has, somehow, become home.

Freyjadour Falenas, second to last of his name — never, in a million years, did the Prince of Falena ever think of calling such a place home.

But being the Prince, of course, feels like a different lifetime to Freyjadour now.

Freyjadour slinks out to the tree where they’ve stored their belongings for the night; it is a far shorter trip that what he was once used to when it came to sneaking a bit of extra food from the kitchen and the cook, so many years ago.  Georg does not awaken as Freyjadour slides out of his side of the rumbled cloaks and thin mattress they call their own sleeping quarters, nor does his last and truest Knight awaken when he retrieves the last slice of cheesecake from the cool sack. It is served in the style of his homeland; with soft, tart berries on top. For this, Georg would surely forgive him the liberty of taking the last slice for himself. Georg rarely lets him lack for anything. Freyjadour is fortunate, in that. 

He brings the cake to his mouth but his palm is hot, painfully hot, and then he realizes with slick-sweat fear that the rune is warming to life; he closes his eyes in a cringe and opens them inside a vision. Those come easier, now. The spirits inside the rune — Freyjadour does not know whether they mean to haunt him or to bring him comfort, but they do far more of the former than the latter. 

_— Lyon stands in front of him, holding her hand out, berry juice running down her pale skin (it reminds Freyjadour-that-is of the blood that gushed out of her side, so long ago). She’s smiling, for the first time in a long time, while Lym chases after her and Miakis after her, and mother and father are behind him, laughing, and he is in three places at once; he is Lyon, running through the trees of the forest; he is himself, sitting and chuckling while mother laughs about the spirit Lyon shows and he is aunt SIaleeds, watching across the way for signs of predators, ever fearful, and he is himself, looking out, realizing how few people there are here now, how it hurts it hurts it hurts —_

He drops the cake, the taste of berry fallen into ash on his tongue.

He hears the tent flap open, sees George but doesn’t see him, the twilight rune (for it is always strongest at night) diverting his attention, bringing him back in time:

_— Lyon is splashing in the water deep in the purification well in Lunas, the moon high on her back; she is thinking of the Prince, wondering if perhaps he is peaking in on her (and, too, he remembers being the Prince-that-was-once: recalls that he was curious enough to think of peaking but not yet brave enough to dare, that he sat, outside the door, waiting, in a simpler time, in a simpler place.) She thinks of him and wonders if he feels the same way about her that she does about him (perhaps; they were fifteen, and things seemed so much more fluid than they were), wonders if they both might have some kind of future (no).  He thinks of being Sialeeds, the water terribly hot but feeling so cold in the old mountains and the strongest sense of deja vu and wondering if Gizel, too, remembers being where you are: high in the mountains but shut off from the rite, staring into the face of the Goddess herself and he remembers how she feels sad, rotten inside. He thinks too of what he was, then; his body hot, slick with sweat, warmed by a sun he will never feel again —_

“Hey!” Georg throws his arms around him, and Freyjadour feels it, feels warmed by it even, but still, he is in the forest, in Lunas, in Falena with the moon high on his back. Georg shakes him gently, and Freyjadour tries, so hard, to come back to him; to come back to the land where Georg is an old man, growing older; where Freyjadour is still, somehow, silver-haired, no matter how often he dyes his hair black to disguise it. “Frey!”  
  
It takes Georg several long seconds to bring him back. It takes him longer to rouse Frey from the nightmares every time. Neither has discussed it – Frey suspects neither of them have the courage to – but the look on Georg’s face suggests they are both well aware of it. Once, Georg had joked about his sleep-walking tendencies, had reminded him too often of his father's penchant for waking up on piers half-naked in his sleep-clothes. Neither of them has many jokes left now. Like his mother, Frey is losing himself more and more in the past. He is only fortunate in that he does not hold the power of the sun in his hands; he cannot lose Georg, not when he has lost so much, left so much behind. Freyjadour does not understand the power of the runes, of the memories they hold (and they hold  _all_ the memories, not just those from when the rune was worn — all the better to know the pain of so many people long dead). But he knows, now, how his mother could fall, and it scares him.

It scares Georg, too. But he tries his best not to show it, and Freyjadour loves him all the more for it. In his darkest moments, sometimes he wonders why Georg sticks with him; if this is Georg's penance for killing his mother. Or if, perhaps, he is still fulfilling the promise to Ferid he made so long ago, to keep the power of Falena under control - no matter what the cost. 

But then Georg smiles and traces his cheek, like he does now. It is still a brilliant smile, for all that he has aged over the past decade. "You okay?" He asks, gently enough that Freyjadour almost — _almost_ — smiles. 

“I spilled the cheesecake,” he mutters, shaking his head. Georg looks down, expressive pained for a moment, then back at Freyjadour.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, though it does; it's another sign of his control weakening. “We can go back to town tomorrow, get some more. No use crying about it, right?”  
  
He smiles and Freyjadour sees the wrinkles that line his eyes. They are getting so much older, now, so fast; of course, only Georg has aged physically. His hair is shorter now, the wrinkles are more pronounced, and his jowls are loosening. He is no longer the youthful beauty who arrived at the Falenan court some fifteen years ago. Freyjadour, of course, still looks almost the same; he will not age, he does not think, so long as the twin runes burn his hand. They both know it means that he will one day lose Georg; Frey knows that day will come far sooner than either of them would like and he wants nothing so much as to be allowed the dignity of aging, of dying a normal death.

But that is no longer possible. 

They are a terrible dilemma, dawn and twilight. Not quite true runes but not quite normal ones either; Georg doesn’t judge, he’s terrible at magic, but he knows, as well as Frey does, that there is ancient magic in Twilight and Dawn; Freyjadour's runes still have the power to whisper, to _claim_.

Freyjadour loves his homeland too much to lose either, to inflict them on Lym or Miakis or anyone else back home. Keeping them on busts housed deep in Sol Falena would only invite another Godwin, another Barrows. Too many people have died for those petty conflicts already and he has no desire at the end to render Sialeed's sacrifice in vain. But, so long as he holds them, as he can never age, so too can he never go home.  That, too, would invoke another crisis on the crown; Lym has dealt with enough. And the thought of being in the visions' realms — to walk in Lunas, in Raftfleet, in Sol Falena — there is a power there that he fears, especially with the Sun Rune so close by. He is aware, now more than ever, that the runes are living things; that they talk, and talk more when near one another. 

And so, this is their life: constantly running; constantly moving. He and Georg have seen so much of the world now; nations he never could hope to visit once, in another life. It has been ten years since his mother died, since Lym took the crown. He hopes she is doing well. He wonders, idly, if Lym and Miakis still resent them both for running away in the Arshtwal mountains. She used to send warriors looking for them; she has sent few, or at least, few that either of them has encountered, in the last few years.

He hopes it means she has finally forgiven him, given him permission to seek what peace he and Georg can find. Freyjadour understands why his sister might resent him abandoning her and absconding with the last and most noble of the Queen's Knights, but it seems obvious to Freyjadour why they left together; they were both victims of fate. He can only hope that, in time, Lym will forgive him if she has not. 

“Frey…”Georg kisses him, short and comfortingly sweet, and murmurs something that sounds close to _damn_. “Same visions?”

Freyjadour nods, wrapping one hand around Georg's waist. They are careful to only express such intimacy in private, another cost of the runes. Georg grows older and Freyjadour doesn’t; he once looked ten years Freyjadour’s senior, and now he easily looks twenty — even if there remains only a decade between them. The romance, of course, came long after they left Falena, but now, they are inseparable. He feels Georg's pulse beat through his skin and wraps his arms tighter around him, trying to absorb as much of this moment as he can. 

“Fucking runes.” Georg spits into the damp green forest and it’s charming, really, how some things about Georg — like his copious lack of manners — will never change. “Look, forget about it – it doesn’t mean anything, okay?”

“Okay.” Freyjadour looks down at the cheesecake mournfully. Will the bakery be open tomorrow? It is hard to know in Tinto, with the war closing in around them. The roads have been closed, but perhaps tomorrow they will not be. They can only hope. They have stayed one foot ahead of the Dunan and Highland armies, but only just. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” Georg says, whispering it with a fervor that suggests he is willing it to be true; Frey closes his eyes, basking in the simple joy of being held by one who loves him. “We can head north when the roads open, go to Harmonia and find a runesmith, a proper one. Let me take one, Frey, ease that burden…”

It’s an argument they’ve had before; Freyjadour fears what might happen to Georg if he sees what the rune holds; the memories that are not his own, the memories that are Freyjadour’s and Lyon’s and Sialeed's and all the ghosts the rune holds beyond them. And Georg has always been bad at holding magic, at being able to take it. The runes have almost driven Freyjadour mad; he cannot imagine Georg succumbing to them. He does not want to imagine Georg succumbing to them. He does not want Georg to become a memory or a ghost that he sees only when the rune wishes to talk to him. 

“Maybe,” Freyjadour says, non-committal. He can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s meant to be here, in this unforgiving cliff high above Dunan; that Georg is meant to be here. That there is a purpose here, that will be revealed to them both in time. But, knowing such talk is not meant for such times, Freyjadour Falenas instead takes a deep breath and tries to ignore the hot bolt of warmth on his wrist; the twilight rune, trying to comfort him againwith a vision he cannot bear. He sees only Lyon's face, smiling, before he forces himself to pull back, to focus on Georg and the campfire and the broken cake and the damp, sweet smell of dew on the grass. 

He takes Georg’s hand, smiles uneasily. “Back to bed?”  
  
Georg sighs and frowns. “For now,” he says; it is only a moment of peace, but Frey will take it.


End file.
